Mary's Guest

MARY’S GUEST

“Oh, do come in won’t you.” Mary turned to see a shadowy figure standing in the doorway of her small flat. “You must be the gentleman from the Men’s Shed. Bob did say he would send someone round to do some small jobs for me. He said you would be calling in this morning, and you’ve probably noticed already that the front door is one of the jobs. The latch keeps sticking and I can’t lock it properly.”

Her canine companion Fugley, a mud-coloured, medium sized dog of indeterminate heritage, wasn’t so welcoming. He rose from his position at Mary’s feet and with shoulders forward, hackles raised, teeth flashing, and emitting a long, low growl, guaranteed to turn even a Samurai Warrior into Kanten jelly, he made it very clear who was in control. Mary was quick to intervene, embarrassed by Fugley’s behaviour.” Now stop that Fugley.” she remonstrated. “This nice gentleman has very kindly come here to fix some things for us?”

She gestured to the chair next to hers by the fire, and set about apologising. “I’m so sorry about that but Fugley can get a bit, you know.” She rolled her eyes and went on to explain. “He’s only been with me for a few months. The people on the corner moved out and left him behind, and the neighbours said no wonder because he’s so fucking ugly that only his mother could love him. That’s how he got his nickname you see. Anyway, he wandered up and down the street for a while, then cocked his leg on my doorstep and made himself at home. I don’t mind him really,” she justified. “He’s quite good company, but he does snore loud enough to wake the dead, and he can let off some steam after his dinner, if you know what I mean.” She looked fondly at Fugley. “I did try to change his name because it’s a bit rude, and I wanted to call him Harold after my late husband, but he wouldn’t have any of it.”

” Do sit down and get warm won’t you.” Mary invited. “It’s getting cold out there, but I can see that you’re all covered up in your Winter trousers and that nice warm hooded jacket.”

Her guest shuffled to the designated seat and slowly sat down on its edge.

Mary had been knitting and watching television when the man from the Men’s Shed had arrived, and she rose to turn it off, pausing to catch the last few minutes of her favourite programme ‘Married at First Sight.”

She turned back to the business at hand but felt the need to share her delight. “I love it when they get all dressed up for the ceremony, though Jim from our bingo session reckons the men all look like real estate salesmen, and the girls look like blowup dolls. Of course, I didn’t know what a blowup doll was did I, so they all laughed at me when I said I didn’t remember having one anything like it when I was a little girl. I know now, though, “ she tittered, “but I still like the programme.”

“Following on from that,” Mary continued, still smiling, “Bruce went on about how he’d read an article about the average number of times couples have relations in the week after their wedding and we went around the chat and cuppa circle we have after bingo. We talk about everything you know,” she said clarifying the activity,“ and it can be really interesting sometimes, especially when it comes to things like foreign policy decisions regarding international relationships and military intervention. Anyway, when it came to my turn, my hearing’s not the best and I thought the question was how many family relations were at my wedding, and I said around twenty, so I had them all in stitches again.”

Mary realised that her visitor hadn’t uttered a word since he arrived, and she turned her full attention to him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” she asked, and seemingly a little reluctant, he muttered ‘’The Man’ in response.

Mary digested the information and went on with the conversation. “Well Mr. Theman, here I am rambling on, and I expect you’d like to get started,” and she began reading from the list she’d made of repairs and small jobs.

“If you could change the light globes in the porch, and the toilet, and the dining room I’d be grateful.” she began. “Without the light, I can’t see anyone who arrives at night, and with the door latch on the blink, it’s a bit dodgy. The dining room isn’t so much of a problem because there’s only me, and I eat in the kitchen but the toilet can be difficult. I have to use my torch in the evenings but sometimes the battery goes flat so I’ve put down a big, white mat in the bathroom so I can see where it is, but Fugley thinks it’s a game and drags it off to his bed.”

“I’d change them myself.” she went on, “but I’m not good with ladders anymore. The last time I tried to climb one I had a tin of pink paint in my hand, and I tumbled off the second rung, and ended up looking like a giant powder puff in a Miss Piggy dress. Luckily it was a water-based paint, but it took a while to scrub off.”

Mary instinctively inspected her arms for any haunting traces of splatter and she pointed to her watch which was wrapped awkwardly around her small wrist.

“After that paint episode, my son bought me this thing in case I have a fall.” she til her visitor, looking at it as if it was an alien force. “He told me that it’s very smart and it has blue teeth. It’s got an alarm thing on it which apparently tells everyone from the postman to the Prime Minister if I so much as put my left foot forward instead of my right, and I think it would remind me to cut my toenails if I let it. Think of it, all that in this little watch and all I want it to do is tell me the time.”

With that she took the watch off and put it down on a table next to a very slick, wafer thin, mobile phone. “He bought me this as well.” she said, picking up the phone and looking at it with the same mistrust. “Apparently, it’s also very smart, and it has these things called apps. I don’t understand any of it, and I don’t have anything to do with them. I pressed one once, and next thing the phone’s going ping every minute with messages from handsome, young eligible men wanting to take me away for an exotic weekend. Imagine.” she said looking wistfully away to the trees in the garden.

Reconising that she’d gone off track yet again, and that Mr. Theman was beginning to fidget in his seat, Mary refocused. Meantime, Fugley had picked up on the guest’s shifty sideways glances and gum chewing and he moved a little closer to the action.

“There’s the latch and the light globes, but if you could fix that draw in the cabinet over there for me as well, I’d be grateful. It’s where I keep all my important stuff, like documents and my mother’s jewelry. lt’s all a bit too sparkly for me, so I don’t wear it, but I still feel I should keep it, but the drawer’s got jammed so I can’t open or close it.”

Mary made for the kitchen. “I’ll make you a cup of tea, “she advised him, “and if you need any tools, I’ve kept some of Harold’s collection in the cupboard in the hallway. Most of them are hardly used, and some are still in their boxes. He liked to think of himself as a handyman, and he would go off to the hardware shop for a roll of masking tape and come home with some sort of gadget. I remember once he went out for a drill bit and came home with these lamps that you can wear on your head when you want to see what you’re doing, and he said we’d save money on our electricity bill, if we wore them in the evening when we were watching television.”

Mary returned from the kitchen a few minutes later with a tray of tea, sugar, milk, homemade iced oatcakes, and a neatly folded cloth napkin, all presented on her grandmother’s precious Royal Albert china.

“Actually, I must apologise.” she went on, “I’ll have to leave you to it for a while as I need to pop next door and check on my friend Maggie. She sometimes forgets to get dressed, so she ends up walking around the house in her altogether with all her bits showing. I think she might have been a nudist when she was younger, but it’s a bit of a shock for the meter reader. I’ll take Fugley with me because she’s grown very fond of him. The only trouble is that she tries to feed him birdseed because she thinks it’ll make his coat shine.”

With that, Mary and Fugley departed and when they arrived next door, as predicted, Maggie hadn’t a stich on and was at the window waving to the traffic stopped at the lights outside her house. Mary sighed and Fugley looked for the digestive biscuits usually sitting on top of the coffee table with the bird seed, and helped himself to a few of the biscuits, and knocking the birdseed to the floor in the process.

Having succeeded in dressing Maggie in her casual day wear and sitting her down in front of the tv with a cup of her favourite coffee, Mary and Fugley left with Fugley hoping that Maggie wouldn’t count the number of missing digestives.

When she arrived back at her house, Mary turned the handle to let herself in but it was locked. Mr. Theman must have fixed it, she thought, and she congratulated herself on secreting a spare key under the saucy dwarf that winked at everyone on the doorstep.

Fugley rushed in as soon as the door was opened to conduct a recognisance check, but he couldn’t find anything out of place, and there was no sign of the guest. Mary followed him calling out, but there was no response. She checked the lights, all in working order. She opened and closed the drawer with ease, and obviously the front door latch had been repaired. What she also found was a scribbled note on the tea tray that simply said ‘thank you’.

“Well I never,” she said out loud to Fugley. “It Looks as though he’s left but It’s a pity he didn’t stay; I could have given him a small contribution to Men’s Shed funds.”

As it was, she thought, the next best thing would be to phone Bob and express her gratitude for Mr. Theman’s efforts, so she picked up the mobile and pressed the contact number as she’d been shown.

Bob was quick to answer, and jumped in before Mary could speak. “I am glad you phoned Mary because I was just about to call you and apologise for Dan.” He said. “He couldn’t make it this morning as he had to go and collect his mother from the Police Station again. She keeps taking a chainsaw to her next-door neighbour’s fence because she says it doesn’t fit in with her Feng Shui. He does say though that he will get there tomorrow if that’s ok with you.”

Mary stared at the phone as the words set in. Dumbfounded, she looked at Fugley, then back at the phone, and all she could say was WTF.